DealBook: Societe Generale to Restructure After 4th-Quarter Loss

5:05 a.m. | Updated

PARIS – Société Générale, one of the largest French banks, posted a larger fourth-quarter loss on Wednesday than the market had expected and said it would restructure to cut costs and simplify operations.

The bank reported a net loss of 476 million euros ($640 million), compared with a profit of 100 million euros in the period a year earlier. Analysts surveyed by Reuters had expected a net loss of about 237 million euros.

Profit was hurt by a charge of 686 million euros as the bank revalued its own debt, an accounting obligation as the market for those securities improved. It also set aside 300 million euros as a provision against legal costs, and it wrote down 380 million euros of good will in its investment banking business, mostly on the Newedge Group, a brokerage in which it owns a 50 percent stake.

Excluding the one-time items, it said fourth-quarter net income would have been about 537 million euros.

Under Frédéric Oudéa, its chairman and chief executive, Société Générale has been working to emerge from the financial crisis as a leaner institution. It said that from mid-2011 to the end of 2012, it disposed of 16 billion euros of loan portfolio assets from the corporate and investment banking unit, and an additional 19 billion euros of other assets.

The bank’s restructuring, and an improvement in sentiment in the euro zone economy, have helped to restore its market standing. After a difficult 2011 that was marred by questions about Société Générale’s exposure to Greece, the bank’s shares have rallied, gaining 49 percent in the last year.

In a research note to investors, Andrew Lim, a banking analyst at Espirito Santo in London, said that while “management has dealt convincingly with concerns about weak capital adequacy and liquidity in 2012, Société Générale is still struggling to convince investors that it can achieve improved returns.”

Shares in Société Générale, based in Paris, fell 3.5 percent in morning trading on Wednesday.

Société Générale said on Wednesday that Philippe Heim would take over as chief financial officer. Mr. Heim succeeds Bertrand Badré, who is leaving to take a position as managing director for finance at the World Bank. The bank also said Jacques Ripoll, the bank’s asset management chief, “has decided to pursue his career outside the group.”

The restructuring measures announced on Wednesday aim to focus the bank on three core businesses: French retail banking; international retail banking and financial services; and corporate and investment banking and private banking.

The Société Générale group employs about 160,000 employees around the world, and it was not immediately clear if the announcement of a new organization meant the bank would follow the lead of other large global institutions with a round of layoffs.

“There will be review processes to define the target organizations for each entity in the weeks to come,” the bank said. “The organization proposals will be addressed in the framework of an enhanced employee dialogue in keeping with agreements with trade unions and the procedures for consulting with worker councils.”

Mr. Oudéa said in a statement that the purpose of the changes was “to make our organization more efficient and flexible.”

Société Générale said its Tier 1 capital ratio, a measure of the bank’s ability to withstand financial shocks, stood at 10.7 percent at the end of December, up 1.65 percentage points from a year earlier. The French firm said it expected to attain a Core Tier 1 capital target under the accounting rules known as the Basel III regime of 9 percent to 9.5 percent by the end of 2013.

The French bank published its latest results a little more than five years after Jérôme Kerviel, a trader in the bank’s equity derivatives business, built unauthorized positions that led to a 4.9 billion euro loss for Société Générale.

Mr. Kerviel’s conviction on charges of breach of trust and forgery was upheld in October by the Paris Court of Appeals. He also was ordered to serve a three-year prison term, pending appeal, and to repay the bank for the full amount of the 4.9 billion euro loss.

On Tuesday, Mr. Kerviel told the French radio station RTL that he was challenging the repayment order in a labor court, saying he had been ordered to pay without a third-party expert being allowed to study the damages. He added that he was suing Société Générale for an amount equivalent to the 4.9 billion euro trading loss.

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Ex-Bell officials defend themselves as honorable public servants

Less than three years ago, they were handcuffed and taken away in a case alleged to be so extensive that the district attorney called it "corruption on steroids."

But on Monday, two of the six former Bell council members accused of misappropriating money from the small, mostly immigrant town took to the witness stand and defended themselves as honorable public servants who earned their near-$100,000 salaries by working long hours behind the scenes.

During her three days on the stand, Teresa Jacobo said she responded to constituents who called her cell and home phone at all hours. She put in time at the city's food bank, organized breast cancer awareness marches, sometimes paid for hotel rooms for the homeless and was a staunch advocate for education.

"I was working very hard to improve the lives of the citizens of Bell," she said. "I was bringing in programs and working with them to build leadership and good families, strong families."

Jacobo, 60, said she didn't question the appropriateness of her salary, which made her one of the highest-paid part-time council members in the state.

Former Councilman George Mirabal said he too worked a long, irregular schedule when it came to city affairs.

"I keep hearing time frames over and over again, but there's no clock when you're working on the council," he said Monday. "You're working on the circumstances that are facing you. If a family calls … you don't say, '4 o'clock, work's over.' "

Mirabal, 65, said he often reached out to low-income residents who didn't make it to council meetings, attended workshops to learn how to improve civic affairs and once even made a trip to a San Diego high school to research opening a similar tech charter school in Bell.

"Do you believe you gave everything you could to the citizens of Bell?" asked his attorney, Alex Kessel.

"I'd give more," Mirabal replied.

Both Mirabal and Jacobo testified that not only did they perceive their salaries to be reasonable, but they believed them to be lawful because they were drawn up by the city manager and voted on in open session with the city attorney present.

Mirabal, who once served as Bell's city clerk, even went so far as to say that he was still a firm supporter of the city charter that passed in 2005, viewing it as Bell's "constitution." In a taped interview with authorities, one of Mirabal's council colleagues — Victor Bello — said the city manager told him the charter cleared the way for higher council salaries.

Prosecutors have depicted the defendants as salary gluttons who put their city on a path toward bankruptcy. Mirabal and Jacobo, along with Bello, Luis Artiga, George Cole and Oscar Hernandez, are accused of drawing those paychecks from boards that seldom met and did little work. All face potential prison terms if convicted.

Prosecutors have cited the city's Solid Waste and Recycling Authority as a phantom committee, created only as a device for increasing the council's pay. But defense attorneys said the authority had a very real function, even in a city that contracted with an outside trash company.

Jacobo testified that she understood the introduction of that authority to be merely a legal process and that its purpose was to discuss how Bell might start its own city-run trash service.

A former contract manager for Consolidated Disposal Service testified that Bell officials had been unhappy with the response time to bulky item pickups, terminating their contract about 2005, but that it took about six years to finalize because of an agreement that automatically renewed every year.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Edward Miller questioned Mirabal about the day shortly after his 2010 arrest that he voluntarily told prosecutors that no work was done on authorities outside of meetings.

Mirabal said that if he had made such a statement, it was incorrect. He said he couldn't remember what was said back then and "might have heed and hawed."

"So it's easy to remember now?" Miller asked.

"Yes, actually."

"More than two years after charges have been filed, it's easier for you to remember now that you did work outside of the meetings for the Public Finance Authority?"

"Yes, sir."

Miller later asked Mirabal to explain a paragraph included on City Council agendas that began with the phrase, "City Council members are like you."

After some clarification of the question, Mirabal answered: "That everybody is equal and that if they look into themselves, they would see us."

corina.knoll@latimes.com

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Why Software Developers Should Learn the Thriller Dance

As the CEO of Urban Airship — a Portland, Oregon company that offers tools for building mobile software applications — Scott Kveton oversees a team of 121 employees, including 75 developers and other technical types. One afternoon, Barb Stark walked into his office, and in typical fashion, she unloaded a plan to further the education of these hard-core programmers.

“I need you to just say yes to something,” she told Kveton.

“Yes,” he said, before pausing. “What did I just say yes to?”

“Hiring a choreographer to come in and teach the team how to do the Thriller dance for the Halloween party.”

“Cool,” the boss replied.

Stark is Urban Airship’s “director of culture.” Her job is to ask questions for stuff like this — she starts many a conversation with “This may sound crazy, but” — and Kveton usually says yes. The aim is make life more enjoyable for the company’s developers, and though some aren’t always comfortable with her handiwork, they say she manages to keep them happy.

“As your stereotypical socially awkward introvert geek, I’ve ducked out of a couple Barb parties over the years, but never because I didn’t think they would be amazing,” says Michael Schurter, a developer and the second employee hired by the company. “The parties are where you learn your coworkers aren’t just programming automatons or sometimes even obnoxious adversaries — but people with friends and families with lives and dreams outside our little workday bubble.”

It’s easy to be cynical about efforts to create a “culture” around a team of software developers. Team-building activities are notoriously hokey, and the notion of a “work hard, play hard” lifestyle has become so trite, it’s meaningless. Tech companies are littered with Nerf guns and foosball tables that never get used. But for Schurter and other Urban Airship employees, there’s a self-awareness to Stark’s work that makes it different.

“Even when I have skipped, she’s caught wind of it, gently ribbed me to change my mind, and then congratulated me on good work/life balance when I wouldn’t give in,” Schurter says. This demonstrates that the parties aren’t about monopolizing employee’s personal time or establishing social pecking orders, he explains. They’re about creating an environment where work is not your life.

Urban Airship sees its culture as a key competitive advantage over other software outfits in the Portland area and beyond. The company doubled its employees in 2012, and it plans to more than double again in 2013. It now has a growing office in London, as well as outposts in Palo Alto and San Francisco, after acquiring two other software companies: Telo and SimpleGeo.

Kveton says the company has an low turnover rate — about 13% — and that Stark is a big part of that. Schurter agrees. “I’m not sure I would still be here without her influence,” he says.

Stark started out as the company’s office manager, handling everything from accounting, HR, and facilities to reception, and she has done similar work for several other companies, including old school corporations as well as software startups. “I’ve always been a bit of a generalist,” she says.

As the company grew she gave up parts of her role to full-time employees — an accountant, a receptionist, an HR specialist — and eventually became Kveton’s executive assistant. But she missed the intimacy of a smaller company, and she eventually left for another startup. When the new job didn’t fit her sensibilities, she returned to Urban Airship as its minister of culture.

Culture, Stark says, is “the way things are done around here.” It’s more than just dance routines, parties, and ping pong tournaments. Kveton says the work itself needs to be fun, and there need to be as few barriers to getting your work done as possible.

To that end, the company borrowed the idea of “Free Friday” from another software development outfit, Atlassian. Once a quarter, employees can work on anything they want for 24 hours, so long as they share the results with the company at the end. The company’s relationship with SimpleGeo started out as a Free Friday project and ended up as an acquisition. Kveton says they plan is to make Free Fridays happen more often, perhaps once a month.

The company also holds a regular Friday “happy hour,” a company-wide meeting where everyone talks about what they’ve been working on. But the company does try to keep the meetings to a minimum, and employs strict rules — such as a no multi-tasking policy — to make them as short and effective as possible. And when bigger meetings do happen, the company is aggressively transparent, sharing such details as quarterly revenue, cash on hand, and burn rate.

Stark organizes the parties, and she works with the executives on drafting policies and programs like Free Friday. But she also works at a much smaller, interpersonal level. She makes a point of getting the employees out of the office, arguing that it’s good for developers to get away from coding and talking about code once in a while. To help mix the technical and non-technical teams, she’ll setup lunches or microevents that involve a couple of developers and one or two non-technical staff.

She also handles facilities. She recently flew to Britain to find a new office for the company’s growing London team, making sure the space had the same vibe as the Portland office — a space that was open yet warm, creative yet professional.

Although her role is very much about growing the size of the company, she thinks that even an established company that has a steady plateau could do with a bit more cultural direction. At many companies, these attempts at “fun” would be greeted with cynicism. And not everyone at Urban Airship participates in everything. Only about 20 employees stuck with the Thriller dance. But Stark says her job works — mostly because she take’s it seriously. “I’m old enough to be pretty much be everybody’s mom,” she says. “That gives me perspective.”

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How Oscar played matchmaker for a Scandinavian mutual admiration society

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Two Scandinavian directors.

Nikolaj Arcel, nominated for his smart Danish costume drama “A Royal Affair,” and Espen Sandberg, the co-director with Joachim Roenning of the Norwegian epic “Kon-Tiki,” had never met before this awards season – but when both films were nominated for Oscars and Golden Globes, the two men began to find themselves at the same events in Los Angeles, far from where they grew up.

Is there a kinship between Scandinavian filmmakers?

SANDBERG: Absolutely. It is a small scene, and I think every

Scandinavian movie that does well helps me.

ARCEL: When we heard the Oscar nomination announcements, me and my friends were in the room, and obviously at first we were screaming about our own nomination.

But then we immediately went into talking about how fantastic it was that “Kon-Tiki” got nominated, too. For two Scandinavian countries to be in one nomination pool is quite good for us.

SANDBERG: It’s a phenomenon. A small one, but still …

ARCEL: There is also something worth mentioning, which is that me and Espen and Joachim are sort of alike in the way we work. We are very un-Scandinavian. I think they are known in Norway as being the Hollywood guys in Norway, and I am known as the Hollywood guy in Denmark.

We’re both lovers of Hollywood films, and I think it’s fun that we both have these big films at the same time.

SANDBERG: I totally agree. We make movies sort of in the vein of the movies that they used to make here. They’re the kind of movies we grew up with, and we miss.

ARCEL: Some of the other Scandinavian directors are arthouse directors, more inspired by the French Wave and by filmmakers like Godard. Our generation, we are slightly younger, and we are inspired by Spielberg and Scorsese and Coppola.

Both of your stories are very dear to the countries you come from: “A Royal Affair” is about Johann Struensee, the German doctor who became the lover of the queen and helped push for human rights in Denmark, and “Kon-Tiki” is the story of a voyage by the legendary Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl. Were you thinking of the international audience when you made them, or were you just trying to please your home countries?

SANDBERG: We were thinking about both. We even shot a version in English, which was a demand from the financiers, and we also knew that the story, when it happened, was an international phenomenon. But we of course knew that we had to succeed at home first.

ARCEL: Didn’t it make you go crazy that you actually had to edit two films?

SANDBERG: Yeah, but we did the Norwegian one first. And then we matched the English and then adjusted slightly.

ARCEL: I have to say, we didn’t think about the international stuff, other than we knew that it had to be big in Germany – which was the only country where it totally flopped, by the way. It’s a period drama in Danish, and I never thought it would travel outside of Northern Europe.

Was it hard to pull off a period drama on a limited budget?

ARCEL: It was extremely difficult. It was the most difficult thing I ever had to do, and I think I will never do that again. It was $ 7 million to do the film, and I had to do five or six big scenes a day. So we worked 14, 15, 16 hours a day. And we didn’t focus so much on the surroundings. It’s still a little bit of a chamber piece.

I have to say, I am even more impressed with the work that the guys did on “Kon-Tiki,” because that looks like a $ 150 million Hollywood film. I still can’t figure out how you guys are doing that.

SANDBERG: Thank you. We are very proud of the effects work. I don’t think the effects houses made any money on this. I think they thought, like the actors did, ‘This is our chance to show the world what we can do.’ And they did. We sort of promised them that this movie can really break out, so it’s great now that we’ve come so far.

We had to be very well-prepared. We had to storyboard everything and make pre-visualizations of the scenes that had a lot of effects work. We shot digital, so we could shoot more with the actors in a shorter time. And then we were just being very economical about everything. We shot the two versions, the Norwegian version and the English version, in 59 days in six countries. It was very, very hard work, and four of those weeks were open sea.

Casting somebody to play Thor Heyerdahl, a national hero, must have been a big job.

SANDBERG:Yeah, it’s tough on the actor. We knew from beforehand, because he also plays a smaller part in Max Manus. He’s an amazing actor; he looks the part, but he was actually on his way to study biology when he got accepted to theater school. So I knew he would understand Thor on a deeper level. He is interested in the things that Thor was interested in. We knew very early on that it had to be him, and we cast around him.

ARCEL: I was actually wondering about these specific moments in “Kon-Tiki.” Whenever he gets faced with a real tough challenge, the actor has this little smile on his face, like ‘I can beat this.’ Was that something that Thor Heyerdahl was known for?

SANDBERG: Yes. He put on a smile whenever things got tough.

ARCEL: That was a great touch. You guys must have felt a little bit of the same thing that I did, because as much as Thor is a huge icon in Norway, in Denmark Streunsee is equally known and a very iconic character.

You must have felt the same pressure, that if you fuck this up the whole country’s going to hate you!

SANDBERG: Yes.

You’re both living in Los Angeles these days. Are you looking to do Hollywood films?

ARCEL: Absolutely!

SANDBERG: When Joachim and I started out making movies, we were watching American movies. That was what we dreamt of since we were kids. We always wanted to do that. We would love to do a movie here, and preferably a studio movie. We’re getting close. We’ll see how it goes.

ARCEL: I’m getting some very interesting things as well. But I have a process that’s very important to me. I need to develop my own stuff. Otherwise I have a problem steering the ship. So I’m looking for things that I can write – or maybe books, maybe scripts that are not good so I can fix them and rewrite them. So I don’t think I’m going to be directing right now. I might take a year or so and write.

SANDBERG: I was very happy to hear that you and your writing partner also work as scriptwriters. I would love to have you write something…

ARCEL: Oh yeah. Any time. Absolutely.

SANDBERG: Let’s make a deal here in the room. Anybody have a napkin?

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Well: Straining to Hear and Fend Off Dementia

At a party the other night, a fund-raiser for a literary magazine, I found myself in conversation with a well-known author whose work I greatly admire. I use the term “conversation” loosely. I couldn’t hear a word he said. But worse, the effort I was making to hear was using up so much brain power that I completely forgot the titles of his books.

A senior moment? Maybe. (I’m 65.) But for me, it’s complicated by the fact that I have severe hearing loss, only somewhat eased by a hearing aid and cochlear implant.

Dr. Frank Lin, an otolaryngologist and epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, describes this phenomenon as “cognitive load.” Cognitive overload is the way it feels. Essentially, the brain is so preoccupied with translating the sounds into words that it seems to have no processing power left to search through the storerooms of memory for a response.

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Katherine Bouton speaks about her own experience with hearing loss.

A transcript of this interview can be found here.

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Over the past few years, Dr. Lin has delivered unwelcome news to those of us with hearing loss. His work looks “at the interface of hearing loss, gerontology and public health,” as he writes on his Web site. The most significant issue is the relation between hearing loss and dementia.

In a 2011 paper in The Archives of Neurology, Dr. Lin and colleagues found a strong association between the two. The researchers looked at 639 subjects, ranging in age at the beginning of the study from 36 to 90 (with the majority between 60 and 80). The subjects were part of the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. None had cognitive impairment at the beginning of the study, which followed subjects for 18 years; some had hearing loss.

“Compared to individuals with normal hearing, those individuals with a mild, moderate, and severe hearing loss, respectively, had a 2-, 3- and 5-fold increased risk of developing dementia over the course of the study,” Dr. Lin wrote in an e-mail summarizing the results. The worse the hearing loss, the greater the risk of developing dementia. The correlation remained true even when age, diabetes and hypertension — other conditions associated with dementia — were ruled out.

In an interview, Dr. Lin discussed some possible explanations for the association. The first is social isolation, which may come with hearing loss, a known risk factor for dementia. Another possibility is cognitive load, and a third is some pathological process that causes both hearing loss and dementia.

In a study last month, Dr. Lin and colleagues looked at 1,984 older adults beginning in 1997-8, again using a well-established database. Their findings reinforced those of the 2011 study, but also found that those with hearing loss had a “30 to 40 percent faster rate of loss of thinking and memory abilities” over a six-year period compared with people with normal hearing. Again, the worse the hearing loss, the worse the rate of cognitive decline.

Both studies also found, somewhat surprisingly, that hearing aids were “not significantly associated with lower risk” for cognitive impairment. But self-reporting of hearing-aid use is unreliable, and Dr. Lin’s next study will focus specifically on the way hearing aids are used: for how long, how frequently, how well they have been fitted, what kind of counseling the user received, what other technologies they used to supplement hearing-aid use.

What about the notion of a common pathological process? In a recent paper in the journal Neurology, John Gallacher and colleagues at Cardiff University suggested the possibility of a genetic or environmental factor that could be causing both hearing loss and dementia — and perhaps not in that order. In a phenomenon called reverse causation, a degenerative pathology that leads to early dementia might prove to be a cause of hearing loss.

The work of John T. Cacioppo, director of the Social Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Chicago, also offers a clue to a pathological link. His multidisciplinary studies on isolation have shown that perceived isolation, or loneliness, is “a more important predictor of a variety of adverse health outcomes than is objective social isolation.” Those with hearing loss, who may sit through a dinner party and not hear a word, frequently experience perceived isolation.

Other research, including the Framingham Heart Study, has found an association between hearing loss and another unexpected condition: cardiovascular disease. Again, the evidence suggests a common pathological cause. Dr. David R. Friedland, a professor of otolaryngology at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, hypothesized in a 2009 paper delivered at a conference that low-frequency loss could be an early indication that a patient has vascular problems: the inner ear is “so sensitive to blood flow” that any vascular abnormalities “could be noted earlier here than in other parts of the body.”

A common pathological cause might help explain why hearing aids do not seem to reduce the risk of dementia. But those of us with hearing loss hope that is not the case; common sense suggests that if you don’t have to work so hard to hear, you have greater cognitive power to listen and understand — and remember. And the sense of perceived isolation, another risk for dementia, is reduced.

A critical factor may be the way hearing aids are used. A user must practice to maximize their effectiveness and they may need reprogramming by an audiologist. Additional assistive technologies like looping and FM systems may also be required. And people with progressive hearing loss may need new aids every few years.

Increasingly, people buy hearing aids online or from big-box stores like Costco, making it hard for the user to follow up. In the first year I had hearing aids, I saw my audiologist initially every two weeks for reprocessing and then every three months.

In one study, Dr. Lin and his colleague Wade Chien found that only one in seven adults who could benefit from hearing aids used them. One deterrent is cost ($2,000 to $6,000 per ear), seldom covered by insurance. Another is the stigma of old age.

Hearing loss is a natural part of aging. But for most people with hearing loss, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, the condition begins long before they get old. Almost two-thirds of men with hearing loss began to lose their hearing before age 44. My hearing loss began when I was 30.

Forty-eight million Americans suffer from some degree of hearing loss. If it can be proved in a clinical trial that hearing aids help delay or offset dementia, the benefits would be immeasurable.

“Could we do something to reduce cognitive decline and delay the onset of dementia?” he asked. “It’s hugely important, because by 2050, 1 in 30 Americans will have dementia.

“If we could delay the onset by even one year, the prevalence of dementia drops by 15 percent down the road. You’re talking about billions of dollars in health care savings.”

Should studies establish definitively that correcting hearing loss decreases the potential for early-onset dementia, we might finally overcome the stigma of hearing loss. Get your hearing tested, get it corrected, and enjoy a longer cognitively active life. Establishing the dangers of uncorrected hearing might even convince private insurers and Medicare that covering the cost of hearing aids is a small price to pay to offset the cost of dementia.

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Katherine Bouton is the author of the new book, “Shouting Won’t Help: Why I — and 50 Million Other Americans — Can’t Hear You,” from which this essay is adapted.

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 12, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the location of the Medical College of Wisconsin. It is in Milwaukee, not Madison.

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DealBook: Nexen Secures U.S. Approval of Its Sale to Cnooc

Nexen said on Tuesday that it had received the last regulatory approval needed for its $15 billion sale to a major Chinese oil company, after the Obama administration declared the deal free from national security concerns.

With all necessary regulatory approvals in place, Nexen is set to become the latest acquisition by the Chinese oil industry, as the country seeks more and more sources of oil and natural gas to fuel its economy.

The deal is expected to close around Feb. 25.

The buyer in this transaction, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, or Cnooc, has been among the most acquisitive. It has announced six deals in the last two years, according to Standard & Poor’s Capital IQ. Nexen, based in Calgary, is the biggest proposed deal by Cnooc since its failed attempt to buy Unocal for $18.5 billion in 2005.

Though most of its holdings are abroad, Nexen has major operations in the Gulf of Mexico, which fall under the jurisdiction of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or Cfius.

The approval by the Obama administration comes two months after the Canadian government approved the deal. That was regarded as perhaps the biggest hurdle, given spurts of nationalistic concern over foreign buyers claiming big tracts of natural resources in Canada.

A review by Cfius (pronounced SIF-ee-us) is still regarded as potentially tough, however. The organization, which is chaired by the Treasury secretary, makes its decisions behind closed doors, and buyers are not always told why a deal is rejected.

But Cfius has approved several potentially sensitive deals recently, including the sale of the bankrupt car battery maker A123 Systems to the Wanxiang Group.

Lawyers at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton wrote in a note to clients on Monday that the A123 approval “is evidence that even when politics, protectionism and xenophobia all appear to be significant obstacles, Cfius will not raise objections if it believes no security issues exist.”

“With proper planning and transparency,” Cleary Gottlieb added, “even politically controversial transactions can successfully negotiate the Cfius process.”

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Grammys 2013: Fun., Mumford, Gotye lead a newer generation

Grammy Awards voters gave their top honor to British roots music band Mumford & Sons for their album "Babel" on Sunday at the 55th awards ceremony. Other top honors were distributed to a broad array of younger acts, including indie trio Fun., electronic pop artist Gotye, rapper-R&B singer Frank Ocean and rock group the Black Keys.

"We figured we weren't going to win because the Black Keys have been sweeping up all day — and deservedly so," Mumford & Sons front man Marcus Mumford said after he and his band members strode to the stage at Staples Center in Los Angeles to collect the award from last year's winner, R&B-soul singer Adele.

Pop culture historians may look back at 2013, however, as the year the Grammy Awards gave up its long fight against new forms of music dissemination, embracing songs and videos that consumers soaked up by way of YouTube and other Internet outlets as opposed to purchasing them.

PHOTOS: 2013 Grammy Award winners

"Somebody That I Used to Know," the wildly popular collaboration between Gotye and New Zealand pop singer Kimbra, took the top award presented for a single recording upon being named record of the year, which recognizes performance and record production.

"Somebody…" not only was one of the biggest-selling singles of 2012 but also has notched nearly 400 million views on YouTube, powerfully demonstrating the increasingly vital role of the "broadcast yourself" video Internet phenomenon. Different YouTube posts of Ocean's "Thinking About You" single have totaled nearly 60 million views.

New York indie rock trio Fun. was named best new artist, an acknowledgment of the good-time music the group brought to listeners and viewers last summer largely through its runaway hit single "We Are Young," which has racked up nearly 200 million YouTube views. It also was named song of the year, bringing awards for the group's songwriters, Jack Antonoff, Andrew Dost and Nate Ruess, and collaborator Jeff Bhasker.

GRAMMYS 2013: Full coverage | Pre-show winners | Winners | Ballot

"Everyone can see our faces, and we are not very young — we've been doing this for 12 years," Ruess said as they collected the award.

The song's title could also serve as a theme for the evening, which was dominated by other relatively young acts in the most prestigious Grammy categories.

Singer, rapper and songwriter Ocean emerged the victor in the one category that pitted him directly against real-life rival Chris Brown, as his critically acclaimed solo debut album, "Channel Orange," won the urban contemporary album award. A few minutes later Ocean got a second Grammy with Kanye West, Jay-Z and the Dream in the rap-sung collaboration category for their single "No Church in the Wild."

GRAMMYS 2013: Winners list | Best & Worst |  Red carpet | Timeline | Fashion | Highlights

Ocean's tuxedo covered all but his hands, but it appeared as he picked up the urban album award that his left arm remained in a wrist brace he'd exhibited Thursday at rehearsals for this year's broadcast, a remnant of his scuffle last month with Brown over a parking space at a recording studio. Los Angeles Police Department investigators said Ocean informed them that he would not press charges against Brown.

It was the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach who quickly built up steam as the front-runner to dominate this year's awards, taking several statuettes barely an hour into the show, including producer of the year for himself and three with his group including rock performance, rock song and rock album for "El Camino."

The Black Keys homed in on the fundamentals of rock 'n' roll — big guitar riffs, lustful lyrics and a bevy of musical hooks on "El Camino," one of the best reviewed albums of the group's career.

FULL COVERAGE: Grammy Awards 2013

Auerbach picked up another award as producer of the blues album winner, Dr. John's "Locked Down."

Carrie Underwood grabbed the country solo performance Grammy for the title track from her album "Blown Away," which also won the country song award for writers Josh Kear and Chris Tompkins earlier during the pre-telecast ceremony at Nokia Theatre, across the street from Staples Center.

The Zac Brown Band added to its growing place as a new-generation country powerhouse with a win of the country album trophy for its "Uncaged," built on muscular Southern rock guitar riffs, elaborate multipart vocal harmonies and jam-band instrumental excursions.

Last year's big winner, Adele, collected the first statuette of the night for her single "Set Fire to the Rain" in the pop solo performance category.

The show got off to an eye-popping start with a Cirque du Soleil-inspired performance by Taylor Swift of her nominated single "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together."

The preponderance of youthful acts not broadly known to mainstream TV audiences heightened the use of cross-generational pairings. Rising songwriter and singer Ed Sheeran shared the stage early with veteran Grammy darling Elton John, while Bruno Mars teamed with Sting and Rihanna in a Bob Marley tribute later in the show. Several members of Americana acts, including Alabama Shakes and Mumford & Sons, sang alongside veterans John, Mavis Staples and T Bone Burnett in a salute to drummer Levon Helm of the Band.

But it was the young guns to whom the evening — and perhaps the future — of the Grammy Awards belonged.

The Grammys are determined by about 13,000 voting members of the Recording Academy. The eligibility period for nominated recordings was Oct. 1, 2011, to Sept. 30, 2012. The show aired on CBS live except on the West Coast, which gets a tape delay.

randy.lewis@latimes.com

Twitter: @RandyLewis2

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Judge Dismisses Axl Rose's $20M <cite>Guitar Hero</cite> Lawsuit

Two years ago, Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose brought a $20 million lawsuit against Guitar Hero III maker Activision for the inclusion of his former bandmate Slash in the 2007 videogame. Rose claimed that his deal with the company to license the song “Welcome to the Jungle” for use in the game included a promise from Activision that no images of Slash would be used in the game.

On Friday, LA Superior Court Judge Charles Palmer threw out Rose’s claims of fraud and misrepresentation, the San Marino Tribune reported. Palmer reasoned that Rose had waited too late to file the charges; Rose submitted his complaint three years after the release of Guitar Hero III.

As of 2011, Guitar Hero III had brought in over $830 million for Activision. The publisher announced that it was abandoning the series and canceling games in progress in early 2011.

Slash was all over Guitar Hero III: as a playable character, an opponent in a challenge mode and even in the center of the game’s box art.

Rose was neither the first nor last artist to sue Activision over the Guitar Hero franchise. The Romantics sued the company in 2007 for a cover version of one of their songs that appeared in Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s. In 2009, Courtney Love announced that she planned to “sue the shit out of Activision” for its portrayal of her late husband, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, in the game Guitar Hero 5, calling his appearance in the game “vile.”

Later, both Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine and Gwen Stefani’s band No Doubt sued the company over their own portrayals in Band Hero, a Guitar Hero series spin-off.

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Mother’s obsessive love exposed in Romanian movie at Berlin

BERLIN (Reuters) – Actress Luminita Gheorghiu plays a domineering mother trying to save her son from jail in “Child’s Pose”, a stark family drama from Romania competing in this year’s Berlin film festival.

The movie, directed by Calin Peter Netzer, shines an unforgiving light on the casual corruption and flashy materialism of post-communist Romania’s upper middle class which expects to be able to buy itself out of any difficulty.

Netzer belongs to a group of young Romanian directors who have emerged since the death in 1989 of Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu who had controlled the arts with an iron hand.

With its black humor, social satire and a remorseless focus on its protagonists’ neuroses, the film stands firmly in the tradition of Romanian new wave cinema that has wowed Western audiences over the past decade.

But Gheorghiu said the film’s theme is universal, not local.

“I don’t think this is a problem specific to Romania. There are mothers like this everywhere … who are victims of their unconditional love for their child,” she told a news conference after the film’s world premiere on Monday.

Gheorghiu’s character Cornelia hopes to win back the love of her son Barbu by using her social connections and splashing cash around liberally after he accidentally knocks down and kills a boy while speeding along a road outside Bucharest.

Barbu, 30, traumatized by the accident, faces up to 15 years in jail if convicted but he is also desperate to escape a mother who has always tried to run his life and refuses to let him grow up.

Cornelia, 60, always immaculately turned out in designer outfits and jewellery, lives in a plush villa in Bucharest where the bookshelves are lined with unread works by, among others, Romanian-born Nobel literature laureate Herta Mueller.

BUYING OFF PEOPLE

Cornelia’s imperious attitude to the police, her arrogant disdain for Barbu’s girlfriend, and her awkward attempt to buy off the poor family of the dead boy provide an unflattering insight into the attitudes of Romania’s nouveau riche.

“People from this social class are perhaps more likely to suffer from this kind of almost pathological relationship between a mother and her children than the lower social strata,” said Netzer, who spent part of his youth in Germany.

But Cornelia’s blindness to her own selfishness is also both comic and tragic. In the emotional culmination of the film, during a visit to the humble village home of the dead boy’s parents to pay her condolences, she ends up speaking obsessively about her own son as though he were the one who had died.

Netzer said the film’s title “Child’s Pose” comes from a yoga position, a detail that was edited out of the film, and refers to Cornelia’s inability to let her son break free.

“Child’s Pose” is one of 19 films in this year’s competition at the 11-day Berlinale, the first major European film festival of the year.

Netzer is best known for “Medal of Honour”, an ironic movie about a pensioner who erroneously receives an award for his “heroic” actions in World War Two.

(Reporting by Gareth Jones, Editing by Belinda Goldsmith)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Catholic Bishops Reject Contraception Compromise

The bishops said they would continue fighting the federal mandate in court.

The administration said the proposal, issued last Friday, would guarantee free employee coverage of birth control “while respecting religious concerns” of organizations that objected to paying or providing for it.

The bishops said the proposal seemed to address part of their concern about the definition of religious employers who could be exempted from the requirement to offer contraceptive coverage at no charge to employees. But they said it did not go far enough and failed to answer many questions, like who would pay for birth control coverage provided to employees of certain nonprofit religious organizations.

“The administration’s proposal maintains its inaccurate distinction among religious ministries,” said Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. “It appears to offer second-class status to our first-class institutions in Catholic health care, Catholic education and Catholic charities. The Department of Health and Human Services offers what it calls an ‘accommodation,’ rather than accepting the fact that these ministries are integral to our church and worthy of the same exemption as our Catholic churches.”

The bishops’ statement, issued after they had reviewed President Obama’s proposal for six days, was more moderate and measured than their criticisms of the original rule issued by the White House early last year. Cardinal Dolan said the bishops wanted to work with the administration to find a solution.

The administration had no immediate reaction to the bishops’ statement, other than to say it was not a surprise.

Marcia D. Greenberger, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center, said that 99 percent of women used contraceptives at some point in their lives and that their interests must be considered.

“The health needs, the religious and conscience beliefs of women deserve to be respected and protected,” said Ms. Greenberger, who supports the White House proposal.

Under the latest proposal, churches and nonprofit religious groups that object to providing birth control coverage on religious grounds would not have to pay for it. Women who work for such organizations could get free contraceptive coverage through separate individual health insurance policies. The institution objecting to the coverage would not pay for the contraceptives. Costs would be paid by an insurance company, with the possibility that it could recoup the costs through lower health care expenses resulting in part from fewer births.

The administration refused to grant an exemption or accommodation to secular businesses owned by people who said they objected to contraceptive coverage on religious grounds.

The bishops rallied to the defense of such employers.

“In obedience to our Judeo-Christian heritage,” Cardinal Dolan said, “we have consistently taught our people to live their lives during the week to reflect the same beliefs that they proclaim on the Sabbath. We cannot now abandon them to be forced to violate their morally well-informed consciences.”

Federal courts have issued differing judgments on the legality of the federal rule. The litigation appears likely to end up in the Supreme Court.

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia said that the administration’s proposal, at first glance, had “struck some people as a modest improvement.” The proposal, he said, appeared to increase the number of religiously affiliated entities that could claim exemption from the requirement.

But on closer examination, the archbishop said, the federal mandate “remains unnecessary, coercive and gravely flawed.”

“The White House has made no concessions to the religious conscience claims of private businesses, and the whole spirit of the ‘compromise’ is minimalist,” Archbishop Chaput said.

In court cases, judges have expressed keen interest in details of the arrangements for contraceptive coverage. The most difficult question, which the administration has yet to resolve, is how coverage will be provided and financed for employees of self-insured faith-based institutions, which serve as both employers and insurers.

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